Trump's yearslong crusade against Ukraine has finally come home to roost as Republicans call for abandoning Kyiv

Insider ^ | 10/20/22 | John Haltiwanget

[hardspunned]

In a phone call with Ukraine's president this month, US President Joe Biden pledged continued solidarity with Ukraine as it battles Russia's military invasion and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory.

But that level of support could be in jeopardy if the GOP gains control of the House of Representatives in this year's midterm elections.

The warning signs have been building for months.

In April, 10 House Republicans voted against a bill allowing the Biden administration to more easily lend military equipment to Ukraine. The following month, 57 House Republicans voted "no" on a nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. Both measures ultimately passed the chamber.

[SmokingJoe]

That's a lie.

Of course its true.
There are at least 50 wars Ukraine fought between 800s-1349. long before America was even founded
Have a look at this:

List of wars involving Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Ukraine

Regardless of “corrupt”, Zelensky never threatened or invaded Russia, and that's what matters.

Its not our business to shovel out tens of billions of dollars that we don't have (by borrowing yet again) to tin pot, corrupt dictators like Zelensky, while abandoning our own borders and letting in huge quantities of Fentanyl which is currently the number one killer of our youth. That $70 Billion Biden is whovelling to Ukraine would easily complete our southern Mexican boder walls and secure it for generations.
Let Ukraine and Europe take care of their own problems for a change.

[dforest]

Yes, dump this craphole. Save America First.

[hardspunned]

I think President Trump needs to temporarily change his message, Make America Livable Again, MALA.

[nikos1121]

Firstly, this never would have happened under Trump.
Secondly, show me proof that Trump has crusaded against Ukraine, or favored Russia. In truth, he’s been the only one out there with common sense asking that the parties get together and broker a deal.

Another example of sham reporting. Take a viewpoint, then write to support that viewpoint without facts to back it up.

[FlingWingFlyer]

The far left “media” has completely lost its mind. Even FOX went over the edge. There is no truth to find there. They are all far left LIARS. Nothing in the “news” these days is true. Right now, they all have gone full retard and are hysterical about what is probably going to happen next month. Where the heck are the fart checkers? Even they don’t want anything to do with the far left LIARS.

[KC Burke]

Poster "oblomov" had one of the most concise observations about the whole thing:

The Ukraine war is a proxy war between two factions of the left. The old anti-authoritarian left has been marginalized, and they aren’t one of the warring factions. It’s between the nationalist neo-Stalinist left and transnational corporatist progressivism.

Other than the sensible abhorrence of war, we have no dog in this fight.

[wardaddy]

Made me chuckle out loud

[BroJoeK]

"As I said when Trump was deposed, it is a tragedy for America, it is a catastrophe for the rest of the world. Events bear me out."

Agreed.
Trump's actions & ideas clearly demonstrate how strength & genius promote peace, and are vastly less expensive than the consequences of weakness and stupidity.

For the past two years Democrats have behaved as if, not only did they steal the 2020 election, but they know how to steal it again in 2022 and 2024, therefore they can do whatever the h*ll they want and never be called to account.

Of course, for me hope springs eternal, but I'm still not convinced Democrats are wrong about that.

We'll soon see...

[Sgt_Schultze]

Lol! We aren’t “lending” military equipment. We are GIVING it from our own stock. It will never be returned or repaid. Bidet is desperate to conceal his family’s ongoing graft in Ukraine

[hardspunned]

One thing that is never talked about is the knowledge of the performance of our weapons and tactics that is being exposed. For the globalists the Uke quagmire is key for their plans for regime change in Moscow. For America, Russia was no threat (unless, of course, the globalists blunder us into a nuclear exchange). Our only existential threat, China, is closely monitoring the performance and the depletion you spoke of of our weapons systems.

[x]

The article is propaganda. Trump wasn’t crusading against Ukraine. He pursued a responsible policy in the region.

[BroJoeK]

SmokingJoe: "There are at least 50 wars Ukraine fought between 800s-1349. long before America was even founded"

I'll grant you "50 wars", but few if any of those were Ukrainians fighting against Russians.
And the last of those wars came in 1775 wherein Ukraine was defeated and became part of the Russian empire, where it remained until, briefly, during the 1917-1921 war for independence, aka Russian Civil War.

SmokingJoe: "Its not our business to shovel out tens of billions of dollars that we don't have (by borrowing yet again) to tin pot, corrupt dictators like Zelensky... "

Since 1991 Ukraine has held seven presidential elections.

Year -- Elected -- ....Party
1. 1991 -- Kravchuk -- Independent
2. 1994 -- Kuchmar -- Independent
3. 1999 -- Kuchmar -- Independent
4. 2004 -- Yushchenko -- Independent
5. 2010 -- Yanbukovych -- Party of the Regions
6. 2014 -- Poroshenko -- Independent
7. 2019 -- Zelensky -- Servant of the People

Since the year 2000 Valdimir Putin or his stand-in was "elected" five times with no serious opposition.

SmokingJoe: "...while abandoning our own borders and letting in huge quantities of Fentanyl which is currently the number one killer of our youth.
That $70 Billion Biden is whovelling to Ukraine would easily complete our southern Mexican boder walls and secure it for generations."

The US has more than enough money to pay for a robust national defense, including our borders, which is exactly why Democrats are desperate to squander as many trillions of dollars as they possibly can on insane vote-buying schemes.

National defense is not Democrats' first priority, weakened Americans requiring ever stronger central government -- that is their first priority.

So National Defense is a matter of our priorities, not money.

SmokingJoe: "Let Ukraine and Europe take care of their own problems for a change."

Right, of course... just like Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938, you want "peace in our time", why threaten war with a dangerous dictator (Hitler) over a small country many had never heard of and even fewer cared about (Czechoslovakia).

So, Chamberlain gave Hitler what he wanted and achieved "peace in our time".
His peace lasted less than one year.
WWII killed around 35 million in Europe alone, circa 75 million world-wide.

That is the lesson history teaches.
Learn it or die.

[hardspunned]

Hey, it’s media. Of course most of it is horse crap. This media piece is meant to protect the DC regime’s near unanimity of support in congress for their Uke quagmire. I have had regime FR stooges lecture me about Trump’s lock step support of this $500M a day DC DS boondoggle. It’s good to see push back on the narrative. I’ve found with the Republican neocons you can’t be MAGA (we have no business being there) without being automatically libeled a Putin stooge. Trump needs to very forcefully denounce this catastrophe and the floodgates holding back the MAGA opposition will open.

[SmokingJoe]

I'll grant you “50 wars”, but few if any of those were Ukrainians fighting against Russians.

They were still 50 wars fought by Ukraine up to 1349. They've been fighting bloody wars for a long time, even before America was founded.

ince the year 2000 Valdimir Putin or his stand-in was “elected” five times with no serious opposition.

You mean like FDR was elected 5 times followed by Truman after which we amended the constitution?

The US has more than enough money to pay for a robust national defense, including our borders,

The US currently has a DEBT of a massive $31 TRILLION at the Federal level alone, even excluding social security. And every year our budget deficits keep getting worse.
We haven't had a balanced budget for DECADES.
You can't go borrowing over a Trillion dollars every year to make ends meet and then spend over $70 Billion on a super corrupt country which is far away in Europe.
How much have the Germans spent on the Ukraine war so far?
Germany has budget surplus, no?

just like Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938, you want “peace in our time”, why threaten war with a dangerous dictator (Hitler) over a small country many had never heard of and even fewer cared abou

Got nothing to do with Chamberlain.
How do you think the British would have fared without Billions of dollars in US money and arms and soldiers to help them out?
Same as Ukraine is DEMANDING from America now.
Ukraine are not even in Nato. Ukraine has never been an American ally.
We have zero security commitments to Ukraine.
They can go to hell as far as I am concerned.

[A strike]

Putin did it.

[A strike]

I knew I should have asked it this way: How is Russia our enemy?

[EBH]

I think you’ve got the idea.

It is not that anyone here is pro-Putin, but one does have to wonder who made the bed.

Whatever Trump saw regarding Ukraine, he was trying to stop it BEFORE it ever got to this crazy point.

One has to start by asking the right questions:

Why did Obama not interfere over Crimea?

What was this threat from Biden to courts in Ukraine?

Where are all these billions of dollars going to in Ukraine?

How much is being laundered back into the Democrat election coffers? Where are the democrats getting all this $$ for campaigns, nobody wants them in office. They are getting heckled and booed at numerous places?

[BroJoeK]

SmokinJoe: "They were still 50 wars fought by Ukraine up to 1349.
They've been fighting bloody wars for a long time, even before America was founded."

We Americans fought bloody wars for a long time, even before our Founding in 1776 -- i.e., the French and Indian War.
Did that fact give the Japanese a "right" to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, or terrorists a "right" to attack on September 11, 2001?
In both cases we joined with foreign friends & allies to fight back.

In what ways are those attacks on us different from Ukrainians being not just attacked, but invaded by Russians?
It is a simple fact of history that unprovoked aggression, if not defeated will be repeated, bigger and badder the next time.

SmokinJoe: "You mean like FDR was elected 5 times followed by Truman after which we amended the constitution?"

FDR was elected in 1932 (56% of vote), 1936 (60% of vote), 1940 (55% of vote) and 1944 (53%) -- 4 times, not 5.
In each case he had serious opposition and after 1936 declining majorities and electoral college votes.
As a result the US ratified the 22nd Amendment in 1951, term-limiting presidents to two terms.

Putin was "elected" in 2000 (53% of vote), 2004 (71% of vote), 2008 (effectively 73% of vote), 2012 (64% of vote), 2018 (77% of vote).
In most elections Putin's majority increased.
As a result, Russia changed its election laws removing term limits on Putin.

SmokinJoe: "The US currently has a DEBT of a massive $31 TRILLION at the Federal level alone, even excluding social security. And every year our budget deficits keep getting worse. We haven't had a balanced budget for DECADES."

And yet, in years past the US has both balanced, or nearly balanced, the Federal budget while at the same time paying for much higher levels of national defense, relative to GDP.

There's plenty of money to pay for a robust national defense if only we put an end to squandering $trillions on corrupt Democrat vote-buying schemes.

SmokinJoe: "You can't go borrowing over a Trillion dollars every year to make ends meet and then spend over $70 Billion on a super corrupt country which is far away in Europe."

Like I said, there's plenty of money for national defense if we put an end to Democrats' corrupt vote-buying schemes.
As for Ukraine being allegedly "super corrupt", I've seen no evidence they are even a bit more corrupt than our own politicians, and lots of evidence that Ukrainians as a people are both less corrupt and more courageous than Russians.

SmokinJoe: "How much have the Germans spent on the Ukraine war so far?
Germany has budget surplus, no?"

European countries combined have spent over $32 billion on support for Ukraine.
Germans have contributed significantly to the total.
As for Germans' historical balanced budgets -- they may not be quite so balanced this year.

SmokinJoe: "Got nothing to do with Chamberlain."

Everything to do with 1938 Chamberlain in Munich if we abandon Ukraine to its fate as Chamberlain did to Czechoslovakia.

SmokinJoe: "How do you think the British would have fared without Billions of dollars in US money and arms and soldiers to help them out?
Same as Ukraine is DEMANDING from America now."

Exactly right -- we helped out the Brits for exactly the same reasons we now help the Ukes.

SmokinJoe: "Ukraine are not even in Nato.
Ukraine has never been an American ally.
We have zero security commitments to Ukraine."

All of that was also true of the Brits in 1917 and 1941, indeed, least we forget: we had previously fought two major wars against the Brits.
So not only were Brits not our allies, they were former enemies!
And yet, we went to their aid in 1917 and 1941 for many reasons, some quite noble others more... mundane.

But the basic reason was, we didn't want the Kaiser's or Hitler's armies to win, just as we don't want Putin to win today.

SmokinJoe: "They can go to hell as far as I am concerned."

We will certainly burn in h*ll -- in this world as well as the next -- if we let the naked aggressions of madman Putin & others succeed and feed on their past successes to launch yet more aggressions.

They have to be stopped -- somewhere, sometime, somehow, or the next ones will be bigger and harder to stop.

That's the lesson of history.
Learn it or die.

[SmokingJoe]

We Americans fought bloody wars for a long time, even before our Founding in 1776 — i.e., the French and Indian War.

Every country is free to fight all the wars they want, but we DON'T have to pay for every foreign war fought by tinpot, woke dictators like Zelensky, who has banned all the big opposition parties in parliament and taken over all he big media.< Ukraine can fight all the wars they want, as long as the whiny Zelensky doesn't keep DEMANDING that we pat for his wars./p>

Did that fact giv, ever demanding e the Japanese a “right” to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, or terrorists a “right” to attack on September 11, 2001?
In both cases we joined with foreign friends & allies to fight back.

So tell me, just how many billions of free dollars did we receive from these “foreign friends” you are so fond of?
Answer? ZERO dollars.

Did that fact give the Japanese a “right” to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, or terrorists a “right” to attack on September 11, 2001?
In both cases we joined with foreign friends & allies to fight back.

Nope. But then we spent over a Trillion dollars and lost plenty of lives fighting wars to punish those who attacked us. I don't recall us getting any free money from Germany or France or anybody then. These European countries are much older than America is, why the heck do we have to constantly pay for their wars they they get into?

[SmokingJoe]

And yet, in years past the US has both balanced, or nearly balanced, the Federal budget while at the same time paying for much higher levels of national defense, relative to GDP

We are in debt to the tune of $31 Trillion. Adding in social security makes it even worse.
We are running deficits of Trillions of dollars every year.
Do we ave money to waste on Ukraine right now?
Nope.
Not to mention Ukraine is not and has never been an ally of the United Sates. They are not part of NATO or any defense organization we belong to. Right now, this is just a way for the "Big Guy" to get his normal 10%.
Ukraine is not and has never been our responsibility.
Let them go to their Europeans pals to look after them if they must beg for money and arms from somewhere.